Self-Talk and Self Hypnosis 12/25/2009
I’ve covered how hypnosis is a part of everyday reality. If you watch a movie it’s the equivalent of hypnosis as you are guided to experience the story. On the other hand if you are thinking a particular set of thoughts, such as angry or happy thoughts then you are doing self-hypnosis as your thoughts guide your emotional state. Now I’m going to focus on self-talk as self-hypnosis to put another perspective of how hypnosis works. In other words how you talk to yourself in your head – the thoughts you think – also create how you feel. In these instances you are doing self-hypnosis. If you do a lot of negative thinking then you will create a lot of negative feelings in yourself. If you do positive thinking then you will create positive feelings in yourself. You are basically doing self-hypnosis all the time. Suppose you encounter a problem and your thoughts are something like this: “Another problem! Why does this always happen to me. If people would just listen to me then these problems wouldn’t happen. It’s so irritating to have this problem interfering with my plans today” and so on. What you are doing in this case is negative self talk. In other words you are doing bad self-hypnosis. In the same way if a friend of yours is upset and tells you about their problem like this; “You know how when problems start and you feel helpless and you don’t know what to do and its as if everything is falling apart…” Then the friend’s negative conversation will create a negative effect on you (notice how saying ‘you know when’ makes you relate that other person’s negative experience to yourself). Of course it will only happen if you are following along and sympathizing with what you are being told. You will feel the negativity from your friend and you will feel bad. In the above situation your friend has unintentionally done bad or negative hypnosis on you. You probably get t he idea by now. Being in a negative environment, talking to yourself in negative terms (i.e. negative self talk) and having depressing conversation will all put you in a bad mood. In other words you become highly focused on a negative perspective. This is the same as being hypnotized in a negative manner. The reverse is also true. If you ever encounter a problem and think, “Oh a difficult situation! That’s OK. I can handle this like I’ve dealt with other negative situations in the past. I’ll just take a deep breath and imagine a peaceful scene, like a beautiful day at the beach. Now I am relaxed and ready to deal with the situation.” Notice how the focus of your mind is on a positive perspective. You become highly focused on a positive outlook to a problem you are faced with. In this case you are doing positive self-talk or positive self-hypnosis. Same applies to a conversation. If a person is upbeat and happy when talking to you and uses encouraging words, creating positive or empowering images – and you are following along. Then this conversation is effectively good hypnosis. Talking to a person is very similar to hypnosis. Some categorize it as conversational hypnosis. Learning how to talk in a way that both improves your own inner dialogue and how you talk with others makes you a good conversational hypnotist. If you are unaware of the power of words then you may do bad conversational hypnosis without even knowing it. Keeping all the ideas here in mind you realize how powerful your mind can be on your emotional states. Simply swithching the focus of your mind and your thoughts from negative to positive will change you entire outlook and thus your emotional state of being. In the last 2 articles I’ve shown you how hypnosis is simply a state of highly focused attention. Which is something we all experience in our everyday lives. The only difference is the words we use to describe our experiences. A hypnotist will use technical words that makes hypnosis sound mysterious and unusual. The history of hypnosis and the name of the system of therapy named after the Greek God of sleep also contributes to the image of hypnosis. With these concepts in mind we can begin to make an outline of our experience using the scientific terminology of hypnosis to take control of our minds so that we control our thoughts and emotional states. If we do this then we have more control over our lives and can be happier and more successful in our day to day live. When you have understood the processes of hypnosis and self-hypnosis and done some practice you will be able to do self-hypnosis anytime, anywhere providing you with greater control over your life and your interactions with others. |
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